Colombia Declares State of Emergency
By REUTERS
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, declared a state of emergency on Monday to fight what the government described as a ``regime of terror'' following an upsurge of violence that has left 100 people dead since he took office.
Uribe, who was sworn in on Wednesday accompanied by a salvo of leftist rebel mortar shells in Bogota that killed 20 people, also decreed an emergency tax to allow the government to raise $778.5 million to fund a military build-up.
The crisis measures, effective immediately, were announced early on Monday after a day-long cabinet meeting called to discuss an escalation of violence that has left 100 dead in clashes between government troops, rebels and paramilitary outlaws since Uribe was inaugurated.
In an unprecedented attack, rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- known as ``FARC'' -- on Wednesday fired remote-controlled mortars in a street within range of the colonial Congress where Uribe took the presidential oath. Two grenades hit the nearby presidential palace while another misfired into a slum, killing 20 street people.
The attack showed that the 17,000-strong FARC -- Latin America's oldest and most powerful rebels army -- has finally acquired the technical expertise to launch an urban offensive -- a long-time FARC threat. The war has long been confined to the countryside and attacks on the capital are rare.
